That takes the country all the way back to 1969.
Richard Nixon had just entered the White House. Neil Armstrong was preparing to walk on the moon. The Beatles were nearing the end of their legendary run.
More than half a century later, the American labor market has suddenly produced a statistic from that era again.
And the comparison becomes even more striking when the size of today’s workforce is considered.
America had a dramatically smaller civilian labor force in 1969. The Vietnam War draft was also removing large numbers of young men from civilian employment.
Today, the workforce is far larger, yet unemployment filings have still fallen to levels associated with that period.
That is a remarkable signal about layoffs.
Economists generally prefer looking beyond one weekly report, which is why the four-week moving average matters. That measure reportedly fell to 198,750, also reaching territory not seen since 1969.
In other words, this was not merely one unusually favorable week.
The broader trend is showing an exceptionally low level of workers being pushed onto unemployment benefits.
Continuing claims offer another important piece of the picture.
Approximately 1.8 million Americans remain on unemployment benefits after their initial week of filing. While that number may sound substantial in isolation, historically it is extremely low relative to the size of the modern American workforce.
Yet anyone following much of the establishment media’s economic coverage this year could easily have come away with a very different impression.
NBC News described Trump’s economic performance in January as “a mixed picture.”
PBS later portrayed the administration’s promised “roaring economy” as getting “a rough start.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC highlighted polling suggesting that “roughly two-thirds of the public believe the president’s policies have made the economy worse.”
Those narratives now face an inconvenient set of hard numbers.
The unemployment data are not the only encouraging figures.
Worker productivity reportedly increased 1.4 percent during the second quarter, roughly twice the gain economists had expected.
Even the previous quarter looks better than initially believed.
First-quarter productivity growth was revised upward from 0.3 percent to 0.8 percent.
That matters because stronger productivity means American workers are generating more output for each hour on the job. Over time, productivity growth can help businesses increase wages and production without creating the same degree of inflationary pressure.
There was another encouraging sign on that front.
Unit labor costs increased only 1.3 percent, coming in below forecasts.
Taken together, the numbers paint a labor market in which layoffs remain extraordinarily scarce, productivity is improving, and labor-cost pressures appear relatively contained.
That hardly resembles an economy collapsing under the weight of Trump’s policies.
Breitbart economics editor John Carney has argued that the extraordinary streak has received nowhere near the attention it deserves.
Carney wrote that the historic stretch of low layoffs has “gone almost unnoticed and certainly uncelebrated.”
He also argued that the numbers directly “defies the narrative that artificial intelligence is killing jobs.”
That observation is especially significant given the relentless warnings surrounding AI.
For years, Americans have been told that artificial intelligence and automation could rapidly eliminate white-collar employment and leave millions of workers scrambling for jobs.
Yet the unemployment-claims data are showing remarkably little evidence of a nationwide layoff catastrophe.
Instead, employers appear reluctant to let workers go.
That doesn’t mean every economic indicator is perfect, nor does it mean every American household feels prosperous. Housing costs, consumer prices, interest rates and household debt remain important parts of the economic picture.
But those realities do not erase what is happening in the labor market.
The political contrast is also difficult to ignore.
During the Biden years, Americans endured the worst inflation surge in four decades, with prices for groceries, gasoline, housing and other necessities putting enormous pressure on family budgets.
The word “transitory” became infamous as inflation proved far more persistent than officials initially suggested.
Trump entered office promising to reverse that economic direction.
Now his administration can point to an extraordinary labor-market statistic: unemployment claims have remained below 200,000 for three consecutive weeks, something America has not experienced since 1969.
The productivity figures add further ammunition to the White House argument that the economy is strengthening rather than deteriorating.
None of this guarantees what happens next.
Economic conditions can change, and future employment reports will determine whether the historic run continues.
But the numbers already on the board deserve attention.
For months, Trump’s critics have emphasized surveys, sentiment and predictions suggesting economic trouble was around the corner.
Now actual unemployment filings are telling another story.
Americans are losing their jobs at an extraordinarily low rate. Productivity is climbing faster than economists anticipated. Labor costs are increasing more slowly than expected.
And one of the country’s most closely watched employment indicators has just produced a streak unseen since men first walked on the moon.
The media can call that “a mixed picture.”
The numbers are considerably harder to spin.
